Researchers Make Gasoline From Cow Dung

McDrewbie writes "Yahoo! News has an article about Japanese researchers extracting a small amount of gasoline from 3.5oz of cow dung. The process uses application of high heat and pressure. Hopefully, when more information is released, we can find out how much energy it takes to produce this gasoline and how energy efficient the process is."

Comments

We tried that in Husbandry 104

[BadAnalogyGuy]

But the cows kept getting really sick from all the gasoline we were feeding them.

Oil companies?

[merikari]

Let's see the oil companies trying to shus this pile of steaming cow dung.

That didn't come out right.

What is new?

[ozamosi]

Could anyone care to tell me exactly what is new here?

I live in Sweden. Our busses (all our busses, a few cars) doesn't run on fossil fuel - they run on human shit. If anybody would care to go and pick up all the cow dung around, I'm sure it could be used in the shit-to-fuel-factory as well.

Up untill recently they did, however, use cows as fuel: they mixed the shit with animal fat from slaughter houses when they made the fuel.

Much cows = Many beefs

[TheGhostOfDerrida]

"If we tried to use it instead of normal oil, we'd have to cover the entire earth, actually more land, with cattle

Yes, but one of the better side-effects of such large scale cattle farming would porterhouse at about forty cents a pound (U.S.)

(by the way, I just made that price up; there wasn't any real calculation concerning real statistics and/or numbers of any sort involved. It was a joke. Porterhouse is fine cut of beef, and, as such, tends to be a little pricier. Using the logic of "More cattle = more beef = greater supply of porterhouse = lower price", I was able to pull a low number out of my ass. I hope you're all happy, I think I just killed any humor this joke may have had. But, because every time I make a joke on this site somebody feels the need to try to get deep about either the failings-of-man-as-a-whole or the-lies-that-science-is-made-from, I thought I'd try one last attempt at saving them the trouble. It's only a joke. It's only ever a joke. If you comment on a joke, it should either be a comment taking the joke further, or telling the comedian that they aren't funny. One should not respond to a joke on a forum such as this with a deep and mostly unrelated philosophic dialogue about two or three of the words used. That's bad forum ettiquete. Trespassers will be violated, violators will be shot, offer void in texas as I don't believe in texas, and please see official gamepiece for complete rules and restrictions that may apply in my/your/his or her area. If you would like to request the rules and restrictions in French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, or Serbo-Croatian, please send self addressed stamped envelope taped to the front of a postcard with a written request for aforementioned info to the address provided. Thanks for playing.)
~ken